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Thursday, April 3, 2014

A new way to break into your home

We have all seen commercials
for a fully connected or “smart” home. A few of you are signing up for a full
package and many of you are starting to install a few WiFi enabled devices and
appliances in your homes such as an alarm system you can set through your
phone, a WiFi enabled security camera or baby monitor that you can watch
remotely and a thermostat to set the temperature of your home while you are
away. Manufacturers are in a race to connect every object in your home through
WiFi or Bluetooth as consumer interest peaks while prices continue to decline.
It won’t be long before your refrigerator, toaster and potentially every other
appliance in your home is interconnected. However, these systems come with real
security risks so you should pay attention.

Hackers are in
fact, getting into those devices and doing real damage. If you perform a Google
Search for “hacking baby monitor”, you can see thousands of articles about the
problem.Hackers are getting into all
sorts of Wifi and Bluetooth devices in people’s homes. Some hackers are doing
harmless pranks while others are using these devices to break into homes.

One solution is
to not place any of these objects in your home but I’m certainly not suggesting
that. What I am suggesting is that you become aware of vulnerabilities and pay
more attention. Here are some basic things for you to do:

1. Almost all of
the devices come with some preinstalled password by default. You must reset
those passwords to something new. This has been a problem since the first
answering machine was installed in a home. To access the answering machine, you
just call the phone number and press * followed by the code. Very few people
changed the code from the default and hackers have been having fun with
people’s answering machines ever since.

2. Make sure your
WiFi Router in your home is security protected and again doesn’t use the
default password provided by the manufacturer. If a hacker can get into your
Router, he has open access to everything.

3. Know what is connected
in your home. Keep and update a list. Check the User Guide for each of these
devices to find out if and how it’s encrypted and how you can update security
settings

4. Most
importantly, pay attention to security issues and ask a lot of questions before
you get the next connected device.

We’re well into a new
age of connectivity.We’ve all heard
horror stories about computers getting hacked. You are going to start to read more and more about home security systems,
electronic door locks and other “ordinary” household
appliances being hacked. Be sure you can get ahead of the problem.